Saturday, October 02, 2004

MCCARTHY RIDES AGAIN: The American Civil Liberities Union is hosting an all-star extravaganza including Patti Smith, Paul Simon and Philip Glass. The event on Monday in New York is intended to call for the repeal of a government plan to enforce charities in the US to clear its employees with the terrorist "watch list". You know, the one with Ted Kennedy and Cat Stevens on it.


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By Simon Hayes Budgen

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

is this article referring to the Cat Stevens who has been sending hundred of thousands of pounds to the charity Hamas?

must be a different Cat Stevens.

2/10/04 8:55 pm
Simon Hayes Budgen said...

Oddly, not even the Israeli Government have ever accused Stevens of giving money to Hamas; the question of charities linked to Hamas is enormously complex: indeed, when the US state department banned five Hamas-linked charities this year it did so on the basis that giving money to the charity "frees up cash for terrorism" - as if Hamas will be saying "Well, we were going to spend this money on bandages, but since the cash for those has been raised elsewhere, we'll divert the funds to buying bombs instead."

The suggestions that Stevens gave directly to terrorists don't actually seem to be backed by any form of evidence at all; presumably if there was evidence that he was underwriting terrorist attacks, he wouldn't be able to get tickets to fly anywhere, much less get onto an American plane without the Americans realising until he was halfway across the Atlantic.

3/10/04 11:45 am

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